A Problem in Search of a Solution

How do you organize data? If you’re working on a project, do you like to keep everything together in a folder in the Finder or Dropbox? If so, what about applications that aren’t document-based? To-do applications are self-contained, with entries in a silo. Notes apps, too. Digital junk drawers, like Yojimbo, Keep It, and DEVONThink, keep their files sorted in their own internal storage systems as well; you don’t save their files across the file system.

If you use specialized apps like these, you have likely struggled with this folder-based organization. In order to find a reasonable solution, you have either tried to make one app the clearinghouse for all of the information, or you use search.

Hook’s Solution and an Illustration

Hook by CogSci looks to solve this problem with Hook. Hook links files together. Hook’s interface is sparse; it’s a utility in the true sense of the word, reminiscent of LaunchBar or Alfred in its presentation.

So here’s an example: each year, I have to prepare budgets for each special education program by school. The final product is a one-page printed spreadsheet, which I give to the accountant at a meeting.

Getting from last year’s categorical budget–the printed spreadsheet–requires a number of pieces of information: last year’s budget, for example, a sheet with projections for how many students I think will be in each program and each grade, notes (usually taken in Drafts of Agenda) from meetings, and emails. It’s a project, in the GTD sense of the word.

As an OmniFocus user, I always create a budget project with a deferred start date (We don’t work on them until about this time of the year, right after Christmas), but there are always notes and considerations that I add to the project, which begin once I’m completing the upcoming school year’s budget (while I was preparing the 20-21 budget, I started thinking of things that I would need to remember for the 21-22 budget).

Without relying on Hook, I could link to support materials in OmniFocus by creating an action item with a note that contains a URL to a Google Sheet, for example–and that might be the right way to manage one of the steps in the project, if it is, in fact, an action item. But having a to-do item exhorting me to review an email that I don’t need to act on isn’t productive.

With Hook, though, I can select the project in OmniFocus and invoke Hook; I am treated to a window with the name of the project, and below it, all of the “hooks” associated with the project: Drafts notes, emails, URLs to Google Drive files, etc. Action items go into OmniFocus, and support files are linked to the project via Hook. I can be promiscuous with my application use, because as long as Hook can get a link to the data, I can attach it to this central point of focus. In the picture below, you can see how Hook shows three support files: an email, Drafts document, and a link to a Google Sheet that I will need to update.

Having a central point of reference to which all of your Hooked links are connected is a key part of using the application. You can’t, for example, grab three files and link them to each other, and then have other files linked to this ersatz collection later on. That’s a strength or weakness depending upon your intended use case. To this end, Hook enables the user to connect to a central hub (for example, a text file or TaskPaper file, or even to select something such as a new OmniFocus project or a folder in Finder. The developer describes exactly this on Hook’s website.

Sync

Users with multiple Macs can take advantage of Hook’s sync feature. You point the app to a folder that both installations of Hook watch (iCloud or Dropbox, for example) and your links will work across devices.

License

CogSci Apps is following a model like Agenda, where buying Hook is a one-time transaction, but releases with new features after one year will cost you. Theses “Updates Licenses,” though, don’t cost as much as the first full license you purchase.